Danny A pulls in with his new replacement bike. The derailleur broke from the prior frame. His first attempt was denied but he tried again and this time, it was approved.

After another growing season, some of the trees are beginning to throw off enough shade to allow some protection.

And there we have it; the reason many of us come out for the Thursday evening ride! In a couple of hours, the back of Kristie's car would be swarming with hungry cyclists.

Jeff and Dan drove to TN to catch the eclipse. Dan had a good story that involved....

....helping a guy pry his truck out of the ditch, above left. Check out the traffic. Kenda Janet told me of a friend that sat in a car for 5 hours while proceeding only 102 miles during the drive back from eclipse watching.

They begin to gather. Small in numbers at first but.....

....building as the witching hour nears. Note Andrew wearing a wind jacket. Note the beautiful sky and near perfect weather, for once for a Thursday evening ride.

Interesting story. Chris, center, puts a bike out for sale at a bike shop's swap day. Jared wanders into that shop, sees the bike, restores it and shazam! The two are reunited (Chris & old bike) this evening. Note Kristie trying to get out of the image but too late.

Jim on the left rolls up to send us out. Last week, a woman passed him on the right so he warned us not to do so. Later, Paul Djupe passed me on the right and I screamed, "You weren't listening to Jimmy tonight."

Because I am plugged in to things, I know that some of the Riveters gather in Starbucks to plot and scheme and then come out and execute the plan. Tonight, Jon and Travis led us out of town like horses breaking from the gate at the Preakness. No warm-up just hammer time. I know, I know, you are thinking, "Sure you'd think it was fast but probably it was not." My 2 pieces of evidence: 1. I was pedaling as hard as I could to keep up (ok, not very compelling). 2. At the Kitzmiller turn at roughly mile 1, Jon and Travis rolled to the back!!! When has anyone ever rolled off the front from a warm-up effort? Was this a plan to shed me quickly or, the guy in full MI kit was in the group and they were trying to get rid of him? Going from 0 to 30 hit my legs hard and I was pretty much done. I hung on until mile 7, came around a corner and began the sprint to catch when my foot came unclipped. Thank goodness! I was toast anyway.

I stopped and waited for quite awhile and here came a huge A group. 20-25 fun people (Kristian, Katherine, Deniece, Paul D, Andrew, Jared, Kim, Dirty D, Kristie, Michael, Hector, etc....) and it is so much more fun to be able to breathe! We followed the uberflat route (folks, I don't create the routes, simply promote them as a low level PR hack) and it was quite civil with turns taken at a modest pace and so this is the situation on the road at this point in time:

Apparently around Galena, the Rivet group got split at an intersection. Least you think this happens only in the Rivet group, so too in the A group. Our group was mostly still intact by the time we arrived at that funky intersection on Duncan Plains Road. There you stop, make a right turn then a quick left. Our group was strung out from this maneuver and besides, there was a church bus full of nuns and a van with a sign that offered free internet service to distract us. That's when Paul Djupe attacked!!!! If the nickname "Dirty" was not already ably taken by Dan, I'd have to consider throwing it to Paul. It's all in good fun and we did eventually track Paul down. I finished with 42 miles and a 22.4mph average (that couple of miles with the Riveters skews my average up a bit). The Rivets finished with a 24.6 avg!!!!!

At the parking lot, Scott was showing off wounds from a fall toward the end of the ride but he was ok and then we got to the serious business of....

In all fairness to the Riveters that got split at the stop sign at Harlem and Sunbury Rd, the entire group was stopped, unclipped, at the stop sign. With no traffic coming in either direction. the front of the group turned right and pressed on at a brisk pace, apparently catching some off guard. There was no intent to split the group at that time.

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Mark is a long-time cyclist who enjoys poking fun at himself but most especially at his friends. No nicknames or comments are intended to offend, accept them in the humor they are intended.